The cost, the energy that is spent, the personnel, those could be spent on other programs that have greater value, such as neighbourhood policing.

OTTAWA POLICE INSP. CARL CARTRIGHT, on the idea of a gun buyback.

The Ottawa Police Service would rather invest in proactive policing and work with communities than fund a gun buyback or CCTV cameras, according to its response to a gun-ban motion from city council.

In 2019, Coun. Rawlson King, in a motion to council, asked the mayor to lobby the federal government to ban handguns and for police to be proactive in their efforts to deal with gun violence. That motion was sent to the police board, whose police and governance committee received the police response on Monday.

King’s motion also referenced a gun buyback. Police, too, were looking into the use of CCTV cameras in response to a separate motion by Mayor Jim Watson.

The premise of a gun buyback is essentially that by removing firearms in a city, police will decrease shootings. The statistics show that just isn’t true, said Insp. Carl Cartright, who oversees the guns and gangs and drug units.

Buy-backs work by taking legal guns into police possession but about 73 per cent of the guns police are dealing with have been illegally smuggled from the United States, Cartright said.

Ottawa police have tried various forms of a buyback in the past. In 2013, police traded digital cameras for guns in the Pixels for Pistols program and took in more than 1,000 firearms — ranging from antique weapons to shotguns, 178 handguns and replica weapons.

“The cost, the energy that is spent, the personnel, those could be spent on other programs that have greater value, such as neighbourhood policing,” Cartright said.

Police Chief Peter Sloly oversaw the same program in Toronto. The haul was a good visual and gave police some good sound bites, he said, and lawful guns were removed from improper and unsafe storage situations, meaning it was less likely for them to be converted into crime guns through theft. But all that effort directed instead into a neighbourhood resource team, even temporarily, or on a police project targeting offenders, would be a better use, Sloly said. As it stands, Ottawa residents can call police at any time to remove a firearm.

On the handgun ban itself, Sloly said it’s clear that the federal government is still in the early stages of drafting legislation.

Police continued to say they aren’t opposed to closed-circuit television cameras, but add that, again, the evidence isn’t there that they prevent crimes.

Police said “gang activity” in the city is fluid. Gone are the neighbourhood gangs and instead what’s surfaced are groups of people moving drugs and guns who work with each other to make money.

The bottom line, police say, is profit.

Latest Ottawa police figures are that there are about 280 people involved in the gun and gang landscape in the city whom police continue to monitor.

King’s motion also called for increased community presence and neighbourhood-based policing.

King, who was at the meeting, said the police plan is a “balanced approach,” which is what he was seeking when he made the motion.

Police continue to build their approach on the street violence and gang strategy developed with Crime Prevention Ottawa. By year’s end, police plan to have launched six neighbourhood resource teams who will continue the proactive work.